Read Online Hold Me Like a Breath by Tiffany Schmidt - Free Book Online

to Garrett. He was close. So close I could feel his body heat and all I wanted to do was lean into it. “Thanks for letting me go, but can we talk in the morning?” I yawned.
    â€œOf course. Get some rest.”
    â€œYou too.”
    Before her door was even completely shut, I was turning to Garrett, hoping the interruption hadn’t killed the flirtation and energy of the moments before. He was waiting, eyes on me with an intensity that made me need to fill the silence. “Where were we? Oh, right. I was knowing things.” I could feel my cheeks warming with blushes, but I still added, “Kissing things.”
    â€œAnd I was going to ask if I could find them out,” Garrett whispered, his voice deep. “May I?”
    â€œThat depends.” I continued down the hall to my bedroom. He followed. “Not if you’re going to treat me like I’m not old or smart enough to make my own decisions.”
    â€œYou can’t ask me not to care about you. I’m always going to want to keep you safe.” He reached for my doorknob, and for a moment he was all stiffness and attention as he pushed it open and scanned my room.
    It was a moment I needed. To catch my breath. To convince myself that this was reality and not a fairy-tale fantasy.
    He turned away from my room and looked at me in a way henever had before. This was not the look he’d given me when he’d lost a bet at eleven and Carter had told him to kiss me as punishment.
    It was a gaze of fire and flames and like he wanted to devour me whole—and something else too …
fear
? Like maybe he was as nervous as I was. It was a combination so intimidating and thrilling that even as I edged closer and tilted my chin up, I couldn’t help but use my least favorite word. “You’ll be careful? My counts
are
good, so you can touch me, just be gentle.”
    â€œI’d never hurt you, princess.” His voice was low, vibrating with emotion, and his hands were in my hair, the tips of his fingers barely skimming my skin. He leaned down—
    â€œPen? You still up?” Carter’s footsteps padded up the carpet of the stairs, smashing the moment before it had truly begun.
    Garrett let go of my hair and stepped backward, but not fast enough. Or maybe too fast. Maybe the sight of Garrett and me framed in the doorway to my bedroom wouldn’t have tipped off Carter if we hadn’t been so frantic to put space between our bodies.
    â€œNo,” he growled.
    â€œCarter—” We said it in unison—which made it worse, made us both fall silent.
    Finally I swallowed. “Did you want something?”
    â€œNever mind. Penny, go in your room and go to sleep. Garrett, you forgot your piece in the car.”
    I’d never hated anything as much as the hunk of metal in Carter’s hand. The way it had scared me in the parking lot, theway it had poisoned this moment, the way my brother looked comfortable holding it, and the way Garrett was turning pale.
    â€œYou’re not gonna tell your dad I forgot it, are you?” He cursed under his breath. “Or
my
dad? My brothers?”
    â€œNo,” said Carter. “But you’ll be lucky if I don’t shoot you with it.”
    I squeaked and grabbed the hem of Garrett’s shirt.
    â€œDon’t touch her,” Carter snapped when Garrett moved to put his hand on mine. “I
was
joking, but if you bruise her, I won’t be.”
    â€œHey!” Garrett sounded, if possible, angrier than Carter. “If you think I’d leave so much as a mark on Penelope—”
    â€œStop it!” I stepped between them.
    Once, when I was ten, Carter had whacked me instead of Garrett when they were “roughhousing”—I’d missed the fireworks of Father’s wrath, but even from the isolation of my bed in the clinic, I’d known the consequences were severe. Just the fact that neither of them was allowed to